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About Our Topics

Whether you are new to the site or a food policy wonk, we aim to inform you with the latest news on all of the important issues facing our food system. We have developed topic pages where you can find information and news on a variety of issues all in one place. Below is a list of our featured topics.

Local Eats

For decades, the industrial food system has had adverse effects on our bodies, our landscape, and our communities. To combat these negative consequences of big agriculture, people in cities, towns, burgs and boroughs all over the United States are at work to rebuild local food systems from the ground up. Our Local Eats stories highlight the good work that communities engage in to make serious inroads towards creating a healthy and just food system. Inspiring examples can be found in Petaluma, Cleveland, Dallas, Portland, Athens, just to name a few.

Every bit helps. This food hub project in the Lehigh Valley inspired a conversation about civics and community engagement. Regional and statewide Eat Local initiatives empower people to eat healthier food and connect chefs to farmers, like this one in South Carolina. Local Eats stories begin in urban backyards in Oakland, with celebrities and regular people too. We even get stories from afar way as Alaska and Hawaii.

Community building around good food happens everywhere. It’s the spark of revolution ignited in kitchens, gardens, schools, buses converted to roving food retailers and by people just like you.

Recent Articles About Local Eats

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When Mariko Grady joined La Cocina’s incubator kitchen three years ago, the thought of owning her own business was little more than a dream. Following the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that devastated Japan in 2011, she had started selling her homemade misos and kojis to friends to raise money to donate to victims in her home country.

Last summer, the outerwear giant Patagonia made an unusual purchase: 80,000 pounds of wild Sockeye salmon. The fish was for its new food line, Patagonia Provisions, available online and in the company’s 30 U.S. retail stores in the form of a 6-ounce, $12 package of vacuum-packed, shelf-stable smoked salmon. If the product is successful, it could become one of the most verifiably ethical and sustainable salmon options on the market, much in the way Patagonia aimed to change the garment industry nearly two decades ago by switching to organic cotton.

The Vermont Packinghouse doesn’t have a single window on the outside, save on the front door of the main office. This is especially ironic, because the slaughterhouse has something unique on the inside: public viewing windows that allow visitors to observe how animals become food. Read more

When people talk to Anthony Fassio about his new role as CEO at Manhattan’s Natural Gourmet Institute (NGI), he tends to field the same question: “Isn’t that the vegan school?”

A few years back, that mighthave been closer to the case. Although NGI didn’ttraditionally offera vegan cooking education, but rather one focused onmacrobiotic food, whichespouses grains, local vegetables, and limited animal products. Read more

Tech business accelerators are sprouting up everywhere. In return for several months of mentorship, education, and access, many fledging companies are willing to trade a percentage of their equity for a quick infusion of cash from venture funders. And, given the explosive interest in food and farming, it should come as no surprise that some investors have finally applied the accelerator model to how and what we eat. Enter Food-X. Read more

Chellie Pingree is not your average member of Congress. Before joining the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, she had a long career as a state lawmaker in Maine. But before that, she spent more than a decade managing a yarn business using wool spun from sheep she had raised herself. The business boomed, and soon yarn stores and catalogs across the country were carrying Pingree’s products. And she did all of that after starting an organic farm on North Haven, a tiny island off the coast of Maine, when she was barely out of her teens. Read more

Like every rural kid who has ever worked in their grandparents’ garden, Sean Brock took for granted the local, home-grown food that surrounded him as a child growing up in Southern Virginia.

“I had no idea how lucky I was to grow up poor in the middle of nowhere,” says Brock. “I wanted to do all the stuff I saw on TV and didn’t want to work in the Goddamn garden. Then it was all I wanted to do, all I gave a shit about.” Read more

Many beer aficionados are familiar with the rare breweries run by Trappist monks. The beer is highly sought after, but it’s not the only food or drink made by a religious order. Many abbeys and convents have deep roots in agriculture, combining farm work with prayer.

Just five miles south of the Colorado-Wyoming border you’ll find one of these places. Idyllic red farm buildings sit in the shadow of the main abbey, all tucked in a stony valley. At the Abbey of St. Walburga, cattle, water buffalo and llamas graze on grass under the watchful eye of Benedictine nuns.Read more

A 24-acre site formerly occupied by the National Tobacco Company will soon become home to a local food hub in Louisville, Kentucky.

While Louisville has emerged as a new foodie destination in the past few years, this project is aimed more at supporting small farmers—and building a local food economy—than serving artisan sandwiches. But there will likely be plenty of those too. Read more

Native American tribes have long shaped the food landscape in this country and many continue to be some of the most vocal advocates for sustainable food production and policies to promote better health for future generations. Below are three tribal nations working to preserve the land while building strong food businesses.Read more